


true north

by StormySkiesAhead



Series: speak to those who travel the skies (see what you learn) [4]
Category: Primeval, various - Fandom
Genre: (well moondancer singular), Cretaceous, Enemies to Friends, Ethan-Patrick Referred To As Patrick, Feral Cat Patrick Quinn, Future, Gen, Moondancers, Name Reclamation, Original Character centric, Permian, Pleistocene, Pliocene, Redemption, So here we are, Sort Of, Telepathy, didn't feel right to kill him off, neither of them are technically human, or to wrap up the plot thread quickly, trying to pull redeeming qualities out of the feral bastard man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:15:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22866175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormySkiesAhead/pseuds/StormySkiesAhead
Summary: They're stuck here, together, in the Pliocene, but Zehavi's not going to fail at her job, and she's not going to be stuck here alone, either, so Ethan Dobrowski- or Patrick Quinn- or whatever he wants to call himself- is going to have to sit down, be quiet, and not try to escape. Zehavi likes being absolutely sure about things, though, which is probably why she doesn't sleep for the first three days.-Or- the slow redemption of one Patrick Quinn, and the efforts made to get back home.
Relationships: background Charlotte Cameron/Ethan Dobrowski, background Charlotte Cameron/Patrick Quinn, background Jess Parker/Original Female Character(s)
Series: speak to those who travel the skies (see what you learn) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1602481





	true north

Zehavi can’t sleep, for the first three days she’s in the Pliocene. She grows weaker and weaker by the day, and by the end of it, she doubts she could actually keep him from running if he wanted to.

Patrick can see that. She knows that much. He knows that in her human skin, even with her strength and the magic that runs through her veins, he could run and she wouldn’t have the strength to follow him.

She’s not slept, she’s barely drank, and she hasn’t eaten more than what’s been hidden in her pockets. She can’t afford to spend time hunting, or looking for sources of food or water, when even a momentary slip means Patrick runs.

The radio’s operational again, but he hasn’t made a single attempt. Zehavi stares at him through her wolf’s eyes, blearily blinking back confusion when a hunk of roasted meat comes off the fire she’s made and lands on her paws.

“This took me three hours,” Patrick says, “You could have done it in five minutes, probably, and more meat, too. But the terror birds don’t like me, and I haven’t had time to fashion anything better than a knife with you watching me like a hawk.”

Zehavi scarfs down the- she thinks it might have been a rabbit- and stares at the small pile of food in the corner, rising to her feet.

“That’s not going to be enough,” Patrick says, “We both know it. I can’t promise that I won’t run, but we both need to eat, and with your size, you should be able to take down the local large prey, instead of this.”

 _“True,”_ Zehavi replies, sinking down and stretching her claws. Patrick stares greedily at the sharp nails.

“Thought it’d be stubby, like wolf claws,” he says. Zehavi’s wondering why he’s being so chatty- they both know he’s a killer, through and through.

She doesn’t realize she’s said such aloud until Patrick narrows his eyes in her direction.

“You may be piss-poor company,” he says, “But you're the only person I can talk to, here.”

There's something else, in his voice. Zehavi knows that if she wasn't a Moondancer, she still would have noticed it, hidden behind rage and cool, collected violence. There's vulnerability, there. Perhaps Patrick hasn't shown his soft underbelly just yet, but it's not pressed to the floor, not anymore.

Zehavi digs into some of the rest of the pile, shakes her fur, and follows her nose to the river. She keeps her lupine skin on, and lunges once something flickers across her line of sight.

She rolls back into camp with a deer. She knows well enough that she’s not going to be able to keep kosher here, but she can try to avoid the less familiar animals.

Patrick falls asleep in the corner while she’s treating the skin, fire and heat and magic used to speed up a process that would normally take far, far longer. Her needles sit next to her. Zehavi is grateful for her inherent need to alter her own clothing- she'd focused on making it herself when she could, and it will serve them both well, now.

“Shame we don't have any spices I can recognize,” she whispers, when Patrick wakes, “It would be nice, to use some. I don't know what's native to this region, but I'm sure _something_ would taste good.”

“I'm not risking food poisoning or death because the meat tastes bland- actually, I don't think I ever asked your name.”

Zehavi snorts.

“I'm absolutely sure I told you.”

“I am almost certain I was never informed,” the killer replies, cracking his back like a normal person, “I feel like I would remember it. Likely something unusual.”

“For your standards, maybe,” Zehavi bites back, “It's Zehavi, Zehavi Sokol.”

“That is a _mouthful._ Do you have a nickname?”

“I am not going to shorten my name because you refuse to pronounce it correctly.”

The man sighs.

“Go to sleep, Zehavi. I'm not going to run, not now.”

“That's exactly what someone who's planning to run would say.”

Patrick sighs again.

“Why don't you trust me?”

“Because you’re my co-worker’s homicidal, sociopathic little brother and I have no reason to?”

“Fair point. Go to sleep.”

Zehavi glares at him, but finally allows her eyes to droop shut, shifting to her full-sized form and curling her tail over her snout.

By the time she wakes up, one of her lupine shoulders is wet, and Patrick is clutching her fur, sound asleep. She’s not sure if it's tears or drool and frankly she doesn't want to find out.

Fortunately, he'd had the good sense to stamp the fire out when he’d gone to sleep. There's a distinct chill in the air, though, which could be why he’s wedged himself between her tail and the rest of her body.

Zehavi picks him up by the scruff of his neck, and carefully places him down again. She needs to hunt, and soon, and the cave entrance is relatively safe- he's not likely to come into any trouble.

Zehavi makes it about one step out of the cave before Patrick yelps, and she dives right back in.

Apparently, she won't have to go far to find trouble at all.

* * *

There's a massive bear, dead, on the floor of the cave. Zehavi is glad the little bag she’s managed to bring along with her is filled with linen and wool thread- she's not going to waste this. She gathers up grasses, and transforms them with flicks of her fingers, treats the furs with the same, and lets the instinct of knowing that vibrates through the back of her head guide them.

“Oh, I can do that,” Patrick says, and twists his hands. The grass in them shifts and turns, and lies still, a pile of linen thread that wraps itself around a spool that was once a bone.

Zehavi blinks, and pauses in her sewing.

“I knew your brother was capable of magic, and Ronnie obviously is, I probably should have guessed you’d be, too,” she says, reaching out for the spool and adding it to her little bag. Patrick’s nose scrunches up. The way it does must be a Quinn standard- Danny and Ronnie make the same expression.

“Who’s Ronnie?”

“Your nephew,” Zehavi replies, “My second cousin, actually.”

Patrick blinks, wide-eyed, at her.

“What.”

“Your brother ended up dating my mother’s cousin, for- I think it was a little under a year, actually- before he got trapped in here. Anyways, during that time, my mother’s cousin has Aaron. We call him Ronnie.”

Patrick continues to stare, then shrugs and goes back to copying her movements, attempting to do a-

“No, no, not like that. That’s a running stitch, you’re going to want to do this-”

She takes his hands in hers, and guides them.

Zehavi is _really_ glad she makes most of her own clothing, especially cold-weather wear. It’s saved her life in the dead of winter before, when she’s flown and ran as far as it can take her and landed herself in the middle of nowhere, and while it’s not cold here, not at all, some sort of knowing on the edge of her consciousness screams at her to line everything with this bear’s fur, with rabbit or anything else she can find. Something with hollow hairs, or guard hairs- anything, really.

They trade between who’s hunting, cleaning, and cooking and who’s sewing extra clothing, water-skins, and more over the next several days, falling into a quiet rhythm. Zehavi sews faster, but Patrick’s decent enough at it, occasionally consulting the piece of scrap fabric where she’d demonstrated the types of stitches for him.

* * *

“You know,” she says, once, while they’re staring at the entrance of the cave, not doing anything else, “If Danny knew you were alive, before we’d gotten to him, he would have jumped right through the first anomaly he’d seen and gone looking for you.”

Patrick looks at her oddly.

“I doubt that.”

“Then you don’t know your brother particularly well,” she says, “Do you know why he wasn’t there, when you first showed up? He’d jumped through an anomaly to the dawn of humanity to save everyone. He’s a self-sacrificial idiot, but he cares more than you seem to think.”

“Would you have done the same thing?” Patrick asks. Zehavi turns to face him.

“What?”

“Would you have done the same thing?”

Zehavi splays out on the cave’s floor like a starfish, staring up at stone above her.

“You know what?” Zehavi says, “I think I would have. I’m here with you, aren’t I? And you’re not even a humanity-ending threat.”

“I’m not sure if I should be relieved or offended,” Patrick replies, a slight grin twitching at the corners of his mouth. It’s the closest thing to a smile that she’s seen from him. Which is strange. Zehavi wasn’t sure his muscles could _do_ that.

* * *

By the time the little radio kicks up a fuss again, weeks later, they’ve got a pair of waterskins, bags that Zehavi has enchanted for size, and plenty of clothing that has been packed into said bags. Speaking of bags, both of them are exhausted, with bags under their eyes, but now they can both sleep at the same time, with traps set up instead of watches.

And then, the little radio _does_ kick up a fuss.

Zehavi grabs it before Patrick can slam his hand down on it, and stuffs it in the pocket she’s sewn in. Patrick’s pleading look now is far more effective than it was when they’d first gotten trapped here.

“I know you want to dash,” Zehavi says, “But I need you to listen to me. We are going to investigate what is on the other side of that anomaly. After that, we are going to decide whether or not it would be a smart decision to stay here, or if it would be smarter to move through the anomaly and work out what to do from there.”

Patrick runs anyways. He’s barely made it three meters out of the cave before his foot catches on one of the boulders, awkwardly, and he pitches forwards. Zehavi lunges, grabbing him by the skin on the back of his neck and shoulders, and hauls him back towards the cave.

“Don’t,” she tells him. Patrick’s panting, wide-eyed, but listens to her, packing up his things and following her on shaky legs as they make their way to the anomaly.

“You know, I could… take care… of whoever it is, that your leader seems to be worried about,” Patrick replies, pulling on the thick cold-weather clothing she’s insisted on.

“That’s called _murder,_ Patrick,” she replies, with none of the heat that would have come from her before they’d been stuck here. She realizes with a start this is the first time she’s used his _name_ , this entire time, and Patrick seems to realize it, too.

The anomaly is strong. Zehavi knows, knows in the same way she knows it’s not going to close for a while yet. She’s about to check the other side, when Patrick grips her hand.

“Why’d you save me?” Patrick asks, “You’ve saved me half a dozen times since we’ve gotten here. I know what it’s like to do this alone, I know most of those would have killed me, at least if I had been by myself. And you’ve made your distaste for me perfectly clear.”

Zehavi leans forwards, golden-yellow eyes bright in the low light of dawn and the shadow she makes against the rising sun.

“Because being worried about having my throat slit in the middle of the night is better than looking out at the open expanses of those grasslands and _knowing_ I’m alone,” she whispers, in the kind of voice that sings of exactly what that feels like. Patrick blinks, taken aback.

“So, what? You tolerate my presence because you’d be lonely otherwise?”

“Exactly,” she retorts. Patrick storms forwards blindly, through the anomaly. Zehavi rushes forwards behind him, pulling up her hood on instinct.

It’s a good plan. She’s hit with frozen air the moment she leaves the Pliocene, so harshly it nearly takes the air from her lungs. Patrick stumbles into a drift, shaking, far ahead of her. She races through the thick snow, and hauls him up to his feet.

“G-good p-p-plan,” he hisses through the cold, “L-let’s g-g-go back.”

Apparently, Zehavi is very bad at judging when anomalies will close, because she can _see_ it pulsing in the distance, and drags Patrick frantically. They can’t survive here long without shelter. It’s too cold, cold, cold, the kind of aching freeze that grinds down teeth into dust and shrivels up what shreds of hope exist into dried-up husks of their former selves.

The anomaly pulses one more time, and shuts. Zehavi _howls_ , skin shifting, massive and thick-furred, anger and grief and terror all at once, the dark of deep winter turning gold to silver in the light of the moon.

She is resplendent in the light, bigger than all but the greatest of carnivores that make their home here. She tips her head back, and howls again, eyes open, green eyeshine reflecting the light in the sky. She can hear, with her hunter’s ears, Patrick’s breath catch as he uses the thick fur of her ruff as a handhold, and silences, just… watching.

Zehavi doesn’t know how long they sit there, watching the Northern Lights- for that is what they are, green and red and blue, swirling through the sky like watercolors trailing behind a painter’s brush- quiet and peaceful.

* * *

It never quite wears off, the glory in the air of seeing such things, but Zehavi knows well enough that they need to find shelter and get moving before they both become the oddest fossils that anyone will ever find. She won’t shift, not now- she needs the thick coat of fur that protects her from these elements, needs everything to be hidden and warm instead of slowly cooling on top of her human form.

There’s a cave system, up ahead. She can hear it in the way her steps on the ground below her change, when they enter the forest, and the snow mostly gives way to the thick boughs of the trees above them, thinner and warmer within the confines of the woods. It’s still freezing, beyond a doubt, but the windchill can’t wind its way through, not here.

Patrick drops and starts to dig his way through an opening half-covered in snow. By the time Zehavi follows him down into the small opening in the ground, more a vertical drop than anything, he’s already started drying out wood for a fire.

“We stayed here,” he says, “Charlotte, Emily, and me, I mean.”

“Do you want me to call you Ethan?” Zehavi asks, “I will, if you ask.”

Patrick snorts, and shakes his head.

“No,” he says, “I haven’t- nobody’s called me Patrick for more than a few days in years. Over a decade, really. Might as well get used to it again.”

“Really, though,” Zehavi says, “If you’d prefer Ethan-”

“I don’t,” Patrick says, “I really don’t. I use it, I answer to it, but it was someone else’s name before it was ever mine. And I can’t- I can’t hear someone call me Ethan, not here.”

Zehavi, to defuse what could be a dangerous situation if it continues escalating, pulls out the sleeping bags, and offers him one. She pulls the water from the wood and grasses with steady hands, and drinks it down greedily. There’s something curious, she notes, deeper in the cave. Patrick gives her a strange look when she gets up, and follows.

She ignites light in her hand. She can’t pull from the outside heat, not now, not when they need every morsel of extra temperature they can get, but Zehavi’s used to working in frigid environments where that’s always been the case, and she can always work under her own power, rather than the sun’s.

“Please teach me how to do that,” Patrick mutters, as they get closer to what her night-adjusted eyes had spotted in the dark. Zehavi’s breath catches as the light jumps, and rises, and illuminates the cavern in full.

Hands. Hand after hand after hand, painted on top of one another, as if to say _we were here, we existed, we left our mark on this earth-_

She doesn’t even notice she’s crying until the cold forcibly reminds her why she should avoid it. Zehavi feels her hands guided by something not herself, as she lays them on top of the prints on the wall of the cavern. Had she been looking, in the corner of her eye, she would have seen Patrick do the same.

Her fingers are longer, and her hands as a whole are bigger- _she’s_ bigger than they were, a testament to good nutrition and a lack of injuries, but-

But the hands are so similar, and the art is _here_ , and it screams to the desire to be _seen_ that always seems to remind her that if these people aren’t human, if _she’s_ not human, then nobody is. It is the constant burden of a Moondancer to be _outside_ their own people, to not share all the same blood, to be sharper and harsher than the person that sits next to her at temple, but this, here- it is a reminder that she is a _person._

She says so, and Patrick lowers his head from where he’s staring at the cave art, and turns to her, asking what she’s talking about.

“If these people aren’t human,” she says, “If we don’t broaden what we define as human, so few people fall into the smaller definition that is it _worth_ it- I just-”

“You’re a shape-changer,” Patrick says, understanding lighting in his eyes, “And a mutant, and people have spent decades telling you you’re not human, but-”

The other not-quite-human (at least, by the standards of home, today) looks up to the cave art again, and chuckles.

“What even _is_ human?”

* * *

Zehavi hauls herself out of the cavern with sharp claws, and spares a quick glance to the lights still playing across the sky. It’s the dark of night, right now, and it very well might be for hours yet, though Zehavi does admit that it’s probably not going to be for as long as she thinks.

If there are Neanderthal cave paintings here, that means the latitude is lower than she’d initially guessed, which means the days and nights will be closer than it would be when it’s this cold, and further north.

But _when_ is it? Zehavi pads with careful feet through the woods into a world both familiar and bizarre.

She hears the howls of some wolf she does not quite know, sees her smaller counterparts racing through the trees. She catches scents both familiar and not, and knows, in the pit of her belly, that this is a wild, wild world, but it is a known world, too, that if she and Patrick looked far enough, _ran_ far enough south, they’d find familiar people, faces that will one day become their own.

There’s a trumpet in the distance, of the elephantine kind. Zehavi feels a strange giddiness alight in her stomach. There’s the Columbian Mammoth in the Menagerie, of course, but Zehavi will always associate ‘mammoth’ with thick coats of hair, with smaller creatures, better known.

She follows the scent of the great beasts, as light begins to filter through the trees. She finds a crest where the trees recede, and feels the breeze ruffle the fur of her face.

There are dozens of them, at least, on the plains below, the very same where she and Patrick had stood last night. Zehavi can hear the snow crunching behind her, and turns.

It’s Patrick.

“I figured I would help where I can,” he says, though his voice is muffled from the furs, “I’ve got knives, from when we were here last.”

Zehavi turns back towards the mammoths, and creeps downwards, sinking into a hunting crouch, belly scraping the snow.

There’s a _Megaloceros-_ an Irish Elk- near the edge of the plains. She circles around, tail swishing lazily. If she makes this, they’ll both be fed for days.

The Megalocerous raises its great head and starts rushing for open terrain. Zehavi is faster, and makes it quick. She doesn’t notice the branch sticking through her shoulder until Patrick’s begun to clean the carcass, and she hisses.

He’s over, surprisingly, in an instant, cursing under his breath both at her and himself.

 _“Didn’t think you’d care,”_ she growls good-naturedly. There’s a look of hurt, upon his face, at that, and then a glare directed, she knows, at himself, not her, and Zehavi narrows her canine eyes.

“Why don’t you think I care?” Patrick asks, taking a look at the injury. It’s not bad- it’s missed anything vital- but it is right next to her still-present scar, and it’s a good teaching tool.

 _“You see that nasty scratch down my belly?”_ she asks, and looks him in the eyes, _“You did that. You tried to kill me, you tried to kill my friends. Why, exactly,_ should _I trust you?”_

“Because if you don’t, this is going to be _much_ more difficult,” Patrick says, and moves to yank out the splinter. Zehavi snaps at him.

“What?”

 _“If you,”_ she hisses, _“If you yank it out, you’re going to need to pack it. You’ve got the extra fabric from our modern clothes, yeah?”_

She coaches him through packing the injury slowly, and directs him to start cleaning the carcass again while she gets to her feet shakily, levitating what they need, including the immense antlers and the thick fur.

“I’m sorry,” Patrick says. He sounds like he might actually mean it.

By the time they reach the cavern, and re-ignite the fire, and Zehavi shifts back and starts putting actual effort into healing herself, they’ve found some incredibly interesting stragglers in the depths of the snow, hiding in warm corners.

Wild garlic. There’s glittering in the cavern, and when Zehavi tastes it hopefully, she’s rewarded with the familiarity of rock salt. They won’t suffer from hyponatremia, at least.

There’s also soapweed, which she’s sure to insist is most certainly _not_ edible, but if they find anywhere warm enough to bathe or clean their clothes in, or they’re stuck here long enough for the rivers to not be mostly frozen over, they’re going to want it.

But they’ve got meat, and they’ve got spices, and they’ve got fire, and they’ve got something to cook it on.

She may be out of commission for the next few days, but as long as they keep an eye on the pseudo-freezer outside, they’re not going to need to hunt for at least a week, and she certainly can point out what plants are edible.

“So, this-”

“Is a comprehensive list of as many wild edible plants as you can find in Europe, by season. My grandmother’s edition kept her alive while she was on the run. You’ve probably got your fair share you remember,” Zehavi says, “But this is for this region, in a very similar time period. A few dozen thousand years is a lot to any species, but it’s not always enough. Once I got the job, I edited it for how far back it’d go.”

Patrick comes back less than an hour later, loaded with mostly edible foods, more soapweed, and a few poisons she has to sort out of the pile. Some, however, do have medicinal properties in small enough doses. Zehavi lists each and every one of them. There are some familiar flowers in the bunch, too, with no medicinal properties- some early-flowering lupins, to her surprise. It must be early spring here, then.

He’s also brought back a good dozen or so she doesn’t recognize. Most of them are bulbs and roots and tubers, but some, like the ones she lays before her, are leafy.

“I wish Dr. Griffin was here,” she says, “It’d be nice to be able to handle these, and just _know_ what they can do.”

It takes two days before she’s back on her feet entirely. In that time, Patrick fusses.

Zehavi is confused, at first, until she remembers Charlotte Cameron. It’s quite possible that she’d gotten sick in this very cave, with Patrick incapable of doing anything, and here she is, teaching him how to heal (and how to transform stones into pots and pans, and how to sew clothing, and a thousand different sustainable survival tactics).

She reaches out, with the same heal-help instincts that are what truly drive her, in the deepest pits of her soul. She reaches out, and smooths down sharp edges of grief, offers comfort when she can.

Charlotte Cameron _did_ get sick in this cave, once upon a time. Zehavi lets Patrick’s mind cling to her own while she teaches him how to make sure it won’t happen again.

* * *

It’s another three weeks of this, with Zehavi hunting (sometimes with her claws and teeth, sometimes with spears), and singing, and slowly getting Patrick to open up. And he’s settling, too. Zehavi knows what it’s like to have someone pull at the edges of her consciousness when they _need_ a strong foundation, and knows how to provide it. Her grandmother is the Queen of Crows, after all. Had she been a poor Moondancer, even as a child, she never would have heard the end of it.

Some nights, she stays awake the entire night, _knowing_ , deep down, that there will be a shift in Patrick’s breathing, that he’ll begin to thrash and shriek, and that he’ll calm when a heavy, furred head rests on his chest, and sink his hands into her fur, and cry until the morning.

He’s never woken, surprisingly, when she does this, but he does tonight, eyes wild, teeth bared. Zehavi’s mind reaches out to meet his, and he recoils on instinct.

 _“Hey,”_ she says, _“It’s just me. Just me. You listening to me?”_

Her voice is soft, easy, and she talks until the blurriness leaves his eyes, and Patrick sits up groggily.

“How often do you do this?”

 _“Very,”_ Zehavi says, _“But I don’t mind.”_

She doesn’t. Really. Maybe it’s the over a month of constant contact. Maybe it’s the deep, aching loneliness she can practically smell from him. Maybe it’s the fact that deep down, compassion is queen amongst Zehavi’s priorities.

But they’re _friends_ , now. Sort of.

“Hey, Patrick,” she asks, shifting back to human, and sitting against the wall of the cavern, “What’s the best thing about Switzerland?”

“What?” he groans, rubbing his eyes, and leaning into her side- for warmth, comfort, or stability, she’s not sure, but he does it all the same.

“Well,” she says, knowing full well this joke is terrible, “The flag’s a big plus.”

* * *

Once the dam has cracked, it crashes open in a flood.

Patrick’s jokes are the long and winding type, while Zehavi’s more of a puns sort of person. They spend weeks like this, slowly coming out of their shells properly. The weather begins to warm, too, and the mammoths leave. Zehavi and Patrick bind each other’s injuries, tell stories when the fire goes low and the true wildness of this place seeps so deeply into their bones. 

Sometimes, they sing. Patrick will sink into Queen or some other popular song he still remembers snatches of, while Zehavi’s swept into memories of being young, under her mother’s watchful eye and father’s tallis at temple, and sings from the pit of her stomach.

Sometimes, they’re honest with each other, Patrick telling her tales of creatures that flicker out of sight, ones she knows too, Zehavi trading him for monsters in the water and fleet-footed friends. Sometimes, they’re too honest with one another- Zehavi cracks under the force of remembered loneliness and expectations- and the knowledge of what's to come- stacked high upon her back, under how much she misses her family, and how much she misses Jess, and Patrick crumples into apology after apology, still clinging to stubborness when he can and refusing to admit he’s done so, or shatters from memories of eyes and nothing else in the dark of the woods.

Some days, there are voices on the wind, calling back to them as they work through their lives.

One of them, most notably, on one spring morning, is a scream.

Zehavi jumps up quickly enough and bounds through the cavern entrance fast enough to pin down the Future Predator on the plains below with bulk alone before it can do any more damage.

The anomaly pulses, faintly, but doesn’t lock. Patrick curses when he arrives. Zehavi shifts, and looks at the young girl, frightened and injured- mostly from the spill she’d undergone, the Future Predator had seemed more interested in the fawn it had taken-, and pulls her to her feet.

The little girl races over to her family, who look at these tall strangers suspiciously, but seem to recognize them as human. Patrick uses his spear to kill another Future Predator that attempts to make its way through the anomaly.

“Let’s go,” she says, “They know this isn’t safe.”

* * *

They stare at the anomaly until it closes in on itself. When it does, as they’re walking back to the cavern, Zehavi has a rare moment of brilliance.

“Next time it opens to then, to that time,” she says, “We’re going to need to go through.”

“Are you mad?” Patrick asks, “Did you _see_ those things?”

His mind is racing, Zehavi can feel that much.

 _‘Damnit,’_ Patrick thinks, _‘Now I’ve played my hand. How dare you infect me with morals.’_

“I know what time that anomaly opens to,” she says, deciding to avoid that particular landmine, “And there’s not just one, but _two_ anomalies to then- long-term anomalies at that- that open to our time. We have options. And, besides, even if they’ve closed, I have- I have an idea.”

“Oh, this ought to be good,” Patrick says, without much of a scoff, surprisingly enough, “Continue.”

“I don’t need your permission. But anyways, there was this- thing, that Helen Cutter had with her, an opening device, one that could open an anomaly to the right time, and plot a course. It’s destroyed, but I’m familiar enough with it that-”

“That you might be able to repair it magically,” Patrick says, eyes wide. Zehavi nods.

“Best case scenario, _we’ll_ be able to power whatever future computer they have there, and then _go home_ ,” she says. The sun begins to dip in the sky. Zehavi wonders, when the first few stars alight in the sky, if it’s Shabbat, here, or what-will-be-Shabbat-someday, or if it’s just an ordinary day, and she’s confusing herself.

There’s fear, in Patrick’s eyes. At what, she’s not exactly sure. It might be the Future Predators, too reminiscent of his own ordeal. It might be the uncertainty of not knowing what she’ll do, when they return to the present.

The light from the fire, and the smoke traveling up their makeshift chimney, throws the handprints deeper in the cave into sharper relief. She doesn’t realize Patrick’s fallen asleep until he’s thrashing, again, in a way he hasn’t for weeks, now.

Zehavi grasps his hand, wakes him up gently, and goes to sleep herself. Had she woken up in the night, she might have noticed that the pattern repeats itself in the opposite direction.

Not much of a surprise, that. Zehavi’s seen far too much of what Future Predators can do to be at all comfortable with how they’re going to get home.

They leave the little cavern the next morning, following the beeping on the little radio. The sun warms Zehavi to her bones, makes her look as golden as her name. The biting chill of the spring wind tugs at her hair, as she looks cautiously at the steep cliffs below them.

They walk for a good, long while, as the beeping gets stronger, wilder, as the interference turns to the breathing of an anomaly. It’s right in the distance- Zehavi can _see_ it. She runs, Patrick cursing behind her, and leaps through with a smile.

It’s only a hand grasping hers that keeps her from falling. Zehavi manages to snag leverage on the back of her feet (and wow, she’s grateful for the fact that she wears durable boots to work), and climb back through the anomaly from there.

“Let’s go through the other side,” she says with a laugh, and turns around. This time, the anomaly doesn’t spit them out onto a cliff face- well, it sort of does, but the opposite side.

There’s instinctual trepidation that fills her bones when she steps through, here. It’s not _hers_ , that much is for certain, but someone else’s memory sparks alarm.

Zehavi doesn’t know _why_ until she hears gunfire, and sees a Future Predator lunge for a man she only recognizes from the Wall of the Fallen they have at the new ARC.

_Captain Tom Ryan._

Her breath hitches in surprise. If that’s a Future Predator, and that’s Tom Ryan, that means-

That means this is the Permian. That means she needs to be _exceedingly_ careful, right now. She shoves herself and Patrick onto the ground, and searches, eyes wide, for the future anomaly that _has_ to connect to here.

She sees it, in the distance, but she’s going to have to time this _very_ carefully. She can’t risk Cutter- _either_ Cutter- seeing her, or seeing Patrick. It could fuck up the timeline _immeasurably._

“Why are we so worried-”

“Because these are my people, but this isn’t my time,” Zehavi hisses, “There’s a very critical shift that’s made _right here._ And we _cannot_ screw this over, Patrick, you understand me?”

Patrick hisses through his teeth, and nods. Zehavi watches as the Gorgonopsid makes its move, and slams its massive body down on the Future Predator. Cutter is distracted, and Zehavi runs, pulling Patrick behind her.

They make it to the Future anomaly, right before it closes. It’s too hot, like it had been in the Permian, and it feels wrong against the leathers and fur they’re both wearing, but Zehavi pulls energy from the heat, and Patrick pulls an envelope of silence around them.

Zehavi _knows_ where they need to go, knows it in the way the streets are shaped and in the blue-on-white logo on the inside of a building they’ve never used, not yet at least. She follows to where shattered glass lays, and where there is a stack of batteries upon the table.

The artefact reassembles itself in Patrick’s hands, and they place it, guided by nothing but instinct, in the slot. Zehavi searches around for the little glass devices, and finds one, in good condition, too.

“This,” she says, “Is the hard part.”

She takes the energy she’s been pulling from the warmth there is outside, and pushes, pulling power into the old-and-not device. Light spills from the computer, in graceful arcs that make her breath catch, that spill across her face, gold on gold.

She takes a moment, to appreciate it, and turns back to Patrick as she sets up the coordinates, hands flying with half-remembered anomalies. There’s a set of three, that sounds promising- three time periods, the first just behind them.

She laughs, and he smiles, and the anomaly opens. With narrowed eyes, and a careful expression, Zehavi pulls out the artefact, and gives it to Patrick.

“Change it,” she says, “And don’t let anyone know what it was. You’ll be able to turn it back, I promise.”

Patrick does. The artefact, shining and delicate, wraps itself around his wrist, cool metal against warm skin.

They step through the anomaly, and close it behind them.

* * *

It’s far too hot in the Cretaceous for their Pleistocene clothes. Fortunately, it’s also warm enough to actually use the soapweed they’ve brought along with them, and even more fortunately, they’re able to open a recently closed anomaly to their next destination.

And that, of course, would be the late 1860’s. Zehavi and Patrick step through, a leather bag slung over each of their shoulders. At first glance, Patrick’s modern clothes fit right in, which means Zehavi’s the only one who has to transform her clothes. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be a perfect replica, just enough to fool the people around them.

Zehavi spends enough time watching, though, to notice.

There’s something deeply _wrong_ , here, in Victorian London. Patrick’s hand falls to his side, to where the leather knife sheath hides under his coat.

Something is _right_ , though, in the air, here. Something feels achingly familiar, not the deep-seated knowing of mammoths under a vaulted open sky, but memories that are _hers_ , a face she could put a name to.

They’re almost home- Zehavi knows _that_ much for certain.

Which means, of course, that she’s got decisions to make.


End file.
